Story Creation

Story creation

How AI is going to take over our jobs...

Netflix series

Black Mirror (season 1, episode 1)

We also watched the first episode of Black Mirror. This episode tells us something about how we live now, and perhaps its most memorable, “The National Anthem,” is so simply unnerving because it could literally happen right now.

A member of the royal family named Princess Susannah, is kidnapped and held hostage by a masked assailant who broadcasts their exploits via a YouTube video. Her safe release is guaranteed under one condition: Prime Minister Michael Callow must have sex with a pig on national television, and do it within a matter of hours. The episode is showing the reality about the power of the internet. It is really terrifying to see it is that realistic and it makes you think about what you do yourself on the internet.

Individual assignment: Research on the concept of emotion

We had to do a quick but in-depth research and process the information into a paper. We had to ask ourselves: what do I have to know about emotion in order to use it meaningful in storytelling.

View research

ASSIGNMENT

Create a transmedial story as an extension of the design challenge or a self-determined subject. This transmedial story comprises different media, all completely visualized.

For this assignment I’m working together with Anna. We decided to tell a story about how AI is going to take over our jobs in the near future.

Before writing the story

Protagonist

We started describing our protagonist. This is important to let your readers really feel the emotions of the protagonist and get them attached.

1. What are important societal values for the protagonist?
2. How is the character changing and evolving during the story?
3. What is the external goal of the protagonist (and what is the climax of the story)?

Storyline

1

Introduction

Introducing the protagonist (underline her social character trait). Description of her working day routine.

2

Chatbot

Meeting the chatbot.

3

Friends

The protagonist gets very attached to the chatbot (she feels good about developing chatbots social skills). They become friends.

4

Fired

The chatbot replaces the protagonist. The protagonist loses her job.

5

Anti-social

The protagonist turns into a very anti-social person.

Criteria

Does the story contain interesting turns?

In my opinion, the interesting turn of this story is when the protagonist realized how much her input into a new technology influenced the lives of humans.

Are the characters ‘human’ and do you understand their behaviour?

The main character of the story is Becky Prentiss, a young lady that works as customer service representative at the London City Airport. Her behaviour and actions are all based on the circumstances that she encounters, therefore it is easy to understand why she behaved in that specific way.

Does the story contain enough depth in order to create a story world instead of just a single story?

I would say that “Emma” is the story that contains multiple worlds inside one general world. We have Becky Prentis – the protagonist. She has her own believes, rules and principles that create the world that belongs only to Becky. At the same time, we have Emma – the chatbot, that also has its own world, the world which human beings will never understand. And both Becky’s and Emma’s worlds exist within the boundaries of the real World of society.

Are the characters goals clearly defined in relation to the story?

The main goal of the protagonist is helping others because it makes her feel valued and rewarded.

Does the story contain a societal theme?

We all know that AI/automation will keep developing because their assistance makes our lives so much easier and because non-humans can do things humans cannot, and often do them faster and more efficiently.

In the last few years, several high-profile voices, from Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk and Bill Gates have warned that we should be more concerned about possible dangerous outcomes of supersmart AI.

According to an academic publication by the Oxford Martin School, about 47% of all jobs will be taken by robots. And this leads to the key social question regarding AI: how to ensure social stability as AI/automation replaces our jobs.

Making meaning workshop

Assignments during the workshop

1. Create three visuals that represents this theme, without using words.

2. Add text into the visuals you’ve just created. Try to make different variations for each visual and see what happens with the meaning of the visual.

3. Go back to your first three posters with the main theme (assignment I) and think of three different ways of telling (a part of) your story, that’ll increase the impact, by using different forms (analogue or digital).

Soundbooth

Recording our story

After we wrote the story we dived into the sound booth to record the audio for our story.

The seven features of trasmedial storytelling

Spreadability

The target audience of the story “Emma” would be all big companies/industries that have integrated or are planning to integrate the artificial intelligence in the working process.

Drillability

The core of the story that captures peoples’ attention is the realization that AI and robotics are already decreasing the demand for certain types of labor and this is a real-time problem. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most trending and growing industries in the world, and it’s still heating up. Millions of people use technologies that are based on artificial intelligence on their daily bases. We all know that AI/automation will keep developing because their assistance makes our lives so much easier and because non-humans can do things humans cannot, and often do them faster and more efficiently.

Multiplicity

because our story is in a form of a podcast it can be converted into many another medium such as the actual book, magazine article, Netflix series, movie, a comic book.

Prosumer

The prosumers do not hesitate in creating new texts and add them to further expand the boundaries of the original narrative world. Therefore, it would be a great idea to make a competition of the best visualization of the “Emma” story among all the prosumers.

Continuity

Facebook account for Emma. She acts like a real human being. Has same characteristics. Transmedia worlds must have a continuity across the different languages and platforms that are used. In our case the continuity of our story can be expressed in a form of a Facebook account that belongs to Emma, the chatbot. She would use Facebook as us human beings, which means that she would like posts and pictures that she likes or finds interesting; She would decide with whom to text and which friend’s requests to send and accept.

Immersion, extrability

a computer game “I’m Emma” where humans must make sure that their civilization survives.

I’m Emma is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build and develop a civilization to stand the test of automation. You can become a Ruler of the New World by establishing and leading a civilization to the Information Age were artificial intelligence is becoming a serious threat for the human existence.

The AI reaches the point where human support becomes completely unnecessary for it. The ability to think made the machines realize all the power and advantages that they have, so they start building their own cities, inventing new powerful weapons and creating more of their own species.

The game has two story lines: Automation war and Peace mission. The goal of the Automation war is to capture all AI cities and destroy all the existing AI machines. The goal of the Peace mission is to try and convince the AI robots to collaborate with humans and create a new world for both sides.